My Trice QNT with my house in the background

Monday, March 7, 2011

Rain again.... sigh

Ah well, time available to ride but the weather has gotten in the way, again. I know, you can ride in the rain but where we live all the roads are 55mph 2 lane country roads with little or no shoulder. Reduced visibility from rain makes it a scary proposition. Some day soon we'll be back at it.

Thinking of reduced visibility reminds me of a ride I was on soon after getting my trike. On a straight country road with very gently rolling hills I had a pickup truck pull up next to me and slow. The passenger rolled down her window and yelled at me that I was virtually impossible to see. She said that all they could see was my yellow helmet. I was surprised. The picture at the top of this page shows the 2 brightly colored flags and streamers. Even with no wind my movement provides enough air current to keep them flapping to some degree.

I thought, and still do, that it's pretty sad if a driver is so blind that they can't see two 24" flags flapping. Still, sad or blind, I'm the one that's going to pay the price. If you watch that little video in a recent post you can see the solution. I attached a triangular reflector to the rear of my trike. The one in the video went on my Janet's trike before her first ride.

Yeah, it's low on the cool factor but so are crutches. It was easy to attach. I just cut a curve out of the bottom to allow for the rear wheel to clear it when the rear suspension is fully compressed. Then I drilled a few holes for zip ties to go through. It attaches to the uprights of the trikes headrest and to the cross member of the seat frame.

Bright, shiny and hard to miss.

So, say it with me... "rain, rain go away" etc. etc. etc.